Talk:List of Persona 4: Dancing All Night Characters
Characters I'm a little confused as to why you put quotations around Dancing Instructor's gender? Regardless of if she is actually trans or a Drag Queen, it's most polite to refer to her as the gender she is going by. I don't see why the admins of this wiki are having such a problem with this when none of the characters in the game do? Please revert the section to what it was last night, the way this one is written is not only very poorly done grammar-wise, but it's also very transphobic, and I'm sure many people that use this website would much prefer an accurate depiction of the character! :This wiki isn't here to cater to that bullshit. The fact of the matter is that the instructor is a male, whether you like it or not. And I'm getting more than a little tired of dealing with this crap. Great Mara (talk) 17:15, July 24, 2015 (UTC) :But it's not bullshit...? Every single character that interacts with Dance Instructor identifies her as female. You wouldn't want someone to misgender you based on your physical stature, would you? Just because she looks like a male does not mean she identifies as one. Just because she may have male parts does not mean she is male. The way you are handling this is nothing short of disgustingly transphobic, and claiming the right to let someone be gendered how they wish as 'bullshit' is very disappointing and repulsive. I think it's smarter to alter the page to match what the game explains, as at the moment, you are giving false information on a character on something many people will be looking at. If you cannot maturely handle gendering a person correctly, I would suggest simply taking her off of the list. ::"Just because s/he has male parts does not mean s/he is male..." And at this point I can no longer take you seriously in any way. Here are your options, the page can stay as it is or I can drop the quotations and refer to them as their proper sex period. Your choice. Great Mara (talk) 17:31, July 24, 2015 (UTC) :::the world is a little more complicated than that, great mara. there's more to humans and human sexuality than just their external genitals. putting the gender in quotes is a dick move. if somebody identifies as a woman (or as a man, or that matter), then they're a woman (or man) regardless of whether their genitals are internal or external. Tathra (talk) 19:06, July 24, 2015 (UTC) ::::No, they have a mental disorder. And excuse me if I choose to stay grounded in reality. Great Mara (talk) 19:10, July 24, 2015 (UTC) :::so you're one of those that classifies homosexuality and other non-traditional sexualities as a mental disorders, eh? son, i am disappoint. well, regardless of your personal feelings, admin or not, this wiki is not your personal blog. this is an issue that will need to be decided by our community. Tathra (talk) 19:16, July 24, 2015 (UTC) ::::Homosexuality, no. They have full grasp of their faculties. This "I'm an x born in a y body" nonsense? Yes, it very much is. No amount of denial or body alteration will ever change someone into the opposite sex. That is a flat out fact. Great Mara (talk) 19:19, July 24, 2015 (UTC) At the end of the day, this character prefers female pronouns, so we should use it out of respect, like we do for Erica on Catherine Wiki. The game officially uses she/her pronouns with no quotation marks, so we should too. —AlexShepherd ツ 19:21, July 24, 2015 (UTC) As the person who is currently doing the very script translation of the game that has been used to add most of all new information to this page, I should probably give some details, as to make sure there will be no confusion about any of this: First of all, the Japanese language does not have third person pronouns in the same sense as the English language (which is how things like, for example, the confusion around Naoto Shirogane's gender can even happen), and while it has various gender-connoted first person pronouns, their use isn't a hard rule as much as just a "nuance", especially in media. That's how Naoto can use "Boku" and still identify as female; Female characters using male-connoted first person pronouns is pretty common in Japanese media (much less common in reality, though it does happen occassionally, especially with socially very awkward women, like Naoto). The Dance Instructor, however, is a different case. She uses "Atashi", a strictly female-connoted pronoun, which no man would ever use, not even when quoting something a woman said. It's female slang for "Watashi". A man using it would be beyond just flamboyant, it would be a surrender of all self-respect. However, that's just the thing; The Dance instructor uses feminine pronouns for herself, dresses in feminine clothing and speaks an extremly feminine variation of Tokyo's regional dialect (for reference, contrary to common claims Naoto does actually *not* speak in a masculine dialect; aside from the use of "Boku", her speech is entirely gender neutral, exactly the same as Mitsuru Kirijo's). At one point Kanami Mashita declares a "Girl's Only Pajama Party" for herself and Nanako Dojima, at which point the Dance Instructor makes it clear that she feels included by this offer and nobody, not Kanami, not Nanako, and not even Ryotaro Dojima, who is in the room at the time, objects to that. At no point do any of the characters belittle the Dance Instructor's appearance or way of presenting herself, at no point is she called a "man". Much, to the contrary, for the whole duration of her screen time, the Dance Instructor clearly presents herself as a woman, meaning that she is either an extremly dedicated Drag Queen or a Transwoman - both of which should be referred to by female third person pronouns in the English language, even if the Japanese language lacks commonly used third person pronouns and thus didn't use any at all. This is why this case is different from Naoto Shirogane's. This is why this character needs to be referred to by feminine pronouns, unless the official localization released in autumn ends up deciding to do otherwise - which would be a damn shame in my personal opinon. 20:49, July 24, 2015 (UTC) Deciding the Dance Instructor's gender is hard.Pof203 (talk) 16:39, August 11, 2015 (UTC) :not really. there is nothing in the game suggesting that she is anything but female. i honestly have no idea where people are even getting the idea that she's trans given that the game only identifies her as female and nothing else (is it the picture? so she's ugly, big fucking deal, that doesn't mean she's not female). most of the discussion is for when we have a character that's actually identified as transsexual, which is probably likely in Persona 5 given its theme of "freedom from the shackles of society". Tathra (talk) 19:01, August 11, 2015 (UTC) Removing the lock on the Page? Now, seeing how The Great Mara's stance has been debunked, could the edit lock on the article maybe be undone? After all, Mara only locked it because people kept trying to (rightfully) remove the quotation marks from the Dance Instructors gender. 09:44, July 25, 2015 (UTC) :well, not really "debunked" but overruled by the community members who have commented, however the whole community hasn't commented yet, at least not some of the more prolific, currently-active editors (G.A.S.A, JupiterKnight, Inpursuit, etc). give it a few days to see if they weigh in (we'll assume no comment means they don't care one way or the other) because it can't be a community decision if half the community hasn't had a chance to comment on it. Tathra (talk) 16:06, July 25, 2015 (UTC) ::I admit, I am not exactly prolific or active anymore, but I will say that I greatly disagree with what Great Mara has been saying up there, and him locking the page solely to defend transphobic edits (and before that deleting the page for transphobic reasons) is an abuse of his admin right. I've gone ahead and unlocked the page (because really?) and yeah, if this kinda thing continues, I will move to take more drastic action.--Otherarrow (talk) 16:33, July 25, 2015 (UTC) :::And just why should I constantly have to come back to fix the page the way it was? Alternative would have been blocking. Would that have been better? And frankly, I've noticed I've been the only one dealing with bad edits, vandalism, and trying to gather up game information in my spare time (ie the DDS game skills that have gone to shit since the automated template was put into place). Just where the fuck is the rest of the community there? Frankly I still can't believe we're engaing in this crap. But if you want to put false information on pages now, go right fucking ahead. Great Mara (talk) 16:45, July 25, 2015 (UTC) ::::Because "the way the page was" was wrong and offensive? It's not rocket science. It's not like these other people were vandalizing the page putting in nonsense or memes (from my experience elsewhere, vandalizing pages to refer to them as "precious cinnamon rolls" is a thing now), they were stating things as they were presented in the game without disgusting biases clouding the facts. And yeah, I probably should have blocked you for blatantly abusing your admin privileges to "win" an edit war and even trying to delete the page solely because you disagreed with presenting a transwoman as a woman and not a man, but I'm a nice guy and I'm willing to give you one more chance. As for your constructive edits, yes, you've been doing good there. However, pretty much all of the users Tathra listed (GASA, JupiterKnight, Inpursuit) have been also working on gathering game information and implementing them on pages, all of them have been reverting vandalism, and while neither of us actively edit, Bluer and I both lurk and block when necessary (in fact, looking at the logs, we both do more of that than you do). This ain't nearly as much of a one man show as you make it out to be.--Otherarrow (talk) 17:04, July 25, 2015 (UTC) :::::If you seriously want to go down the "I'm going to block you" route, I'm going to be a lot less lenient about the direct insult business certain users around here are doing. Great Mara (talk) 17:16, July 25, 2015 (UTC) Everyone, I believe we have gone a bit further ahead of ourselves, so please calm down and take a breather. I'd like to use the case of Naoto in Persona 4, who uses male pronouns to refer to herself at the start of the game. Users begin speculating that she is actually female, but it wasn't after they get further into the game and other official media has been released that clarification about her gender is given. This is the same case at the beginning with the dance instructor, but switch the gender pronouns around and you get users speculating "male", "drag queen" and "trans-woman". That should be enough to make you stop and think about the edits given so far. No amount of discussion about looks and male parts will provide concrete fact, only info by the game developers will. Also, this is a list article and more information should be written in an article when we have enough definite official profile, not speculation, to write about the character. I would myself speculate that the dance instructor is an "okama", a transvestite, but that's my opinion that shouldn't hold water without backing from official sources. I would advice for the state of the article to remain as is for now, at least in regards to the character in question, before further edits are made. BLUER一番 17:41, July 25, 2015 (UTC) : As I have elaborated on in great detail in the section above, the case of the Dance Instructor is nothing like that of Naoto. This is a character who outright refers to herself as female at at least one ocassion in the game. Please read what I've written above. I've not been sitting down and translating the entire game's script 3 months in advance of it's actual english release just so people can ignore all the translator's notes I've made and put incomplete, misleading information on Wikis... I am sorry If I'm sounding harsh, but this has seriously put me into distress. 18:53, July 25, 2015 (UTC) just to clear up, the issue isn't that the content was offensive - this is a franchise that portrays the christian god as a bad guy and lucifer as a good guy, after all - but that its wrong. it is a fact that one's genitals are determined by their chromosomes at conception, but its also a fact that human gender is more complex than just which set of genitals you had at birth. both are factual, and while one view may be offensive, setting a precedent of changing things because "oh noes, somebody's offended!" would be very detrimental to the wiki, so the issue is which set of facts we're to use. i know this is a hot-button issue for some people, but there's no need for any namecalling or drama or any of that nonsense here. we're already a small enough community, so we don't need anybody storming off or being driven off because they're unhappy with the decision or how the decision was made (and i definitely don't want it to be said that its just a small, vocal minority forcing their will on everyone), so please keep all the insults and personal grievances outside. as for great mara's complaint about being the only one doing anything constructive, i can only do one game at a time, and DDS is pretty far down on my list compared to other games that need more work and that i want to play more (mt1-2, lb1-2, raidou1, smtif when the patch comes out in a couple months, plus adding/editing/categorizing images, standardizing pages, etc). i'm sure everyone else is the same - this is a hobby for us, we're doing it because we want to, which means we do it at our own pace, and we also have other hobbies. everything will get done as it gets done, but it will all eventually get done (even if i end up having to do everything myself). Tathra (talk) 21:43, July 25, 2015 (UTC)